Uni life

There’s a cartoon moment perfectly analogous to the last semester of a student’s university degree. Road Runner has run Wiley Coyote off a cliff, and as he hangs suspended in the air he turns to the camera. His expression conveys fear and then defeat. He knows perfectly well his fate. He slowly raises up a sign that says “That’s all folks”. Then he plummets out of screen. This moment of suspension, the moment before the fall, before all stability is removed from underneath you, is what I like to call Last Semester Syndrome. Many students experience this overwhelming feeling of anxiety in their last semester. This anxiety stems from concerns about the future. Financial concerns, job prospect concerns and social isolation concerns. These threatening premonitions lead many to seek hel...

What has O-week at Melbourne Uni taught me about marketing? Lines are good. Lines of people that is. O-week is the perfect opportunity to capture a fresh young audience who have been thrown into a new world of opportunity, learning and binge drinking. Clubs, societies, departments and businesses are all out in force to get those precious signups. I want to critically analyse the success of one particular campaign I saw, and that was Commonwealth Banks. In short, they were able to get a 50m long line with at least a half-hour wait. What were they lining up for? A chance to win some 2 minute noodles or some highlighters! I went up to some students in line and asked why they were lining up. Some of the responses: “To win some free stuff” “Not sure, everyone else is lining up...

O-week is coming to a close, and if you’re a first year, you’ve probably signed up to a bunch of clubs. I thought it’d be fitting to talk to an ex-president of one of the largest and oldest clubs at UniMelb – the Commerce Students Society. Interview with Sam Steiner, 2015 President of the CSS. What is Comm Camp all about? Do you have any stories? Camp is a stupid combination of bonding and genuine friendships being created, with excessive everything, mostly drinking shit beer and playing drinking games that are only sensible when the local cop station is 50 kilometres away. I don’t know what the best stories are because of that, is it the two people who met on comm camp and are still in a relationship over 3 years later, or is it the two people that met on comm camp...

Alright so your summer bender is over, and the time’s come to start facing reality again. Good news is, it actually hasn’t; o-week is where the bender continues. Here’s a few you should definitely do on o-week. 1. Sign up to a camp As nerdy as they sound, camp’s are notoriously notorious for plenty of booze and nudity. You’ll make a bunch of friends of friends at the time, and you might even remember some. Especially when they walk into the first lecture and you have a faint memory of grinding with them at the toga party but you’re both not sure if it actually happened or you’re just imagining it so you avoid making eye contact. Camps: thumbs up. 2. Free food There’s a shitload of clubs trying to get you to sign up. Clubs...

1. It’s supplied Unless you are of the lucky age where you are frequently being invited to 18th or 21st birthday parties, you will truly cherish the luxury of a supplied party. In fact, even if you are going to supplied parties on the regular, it’s bloody hard to turn down a free drink… or ten. You are able to resist temptation early in the night when everyone else is still reasonably sober. However, this foolish dream of saving your brain cells is soon to come to an end. Everyone has started to hit their peak and your drunken friends are having the time of their lives yelling to shitty sing-alongs, while you’re still discussing how much study you have to do with the more studious individuals. It is at this moment that you come to your senses, realise that it’s not that often you can get w...

Nothing is more synonymous with a small population of humans attempting to create a hipster veneer while sticking to their white trash roots than the rise of the gourmet burger in Melbourne. But hey, we aren’t complaining. We get to experience something better than a large ultimate double whopper from Hungry Jacks. Footscray is the latest suburb in Melbourne to experience gentrification, as young educated adults and uni students look for housing closer to city and push the local poorer groups further away. According to Wikipedia, Footscray is located 5km west of Melbourne and has a large Australian Vietnamese population. It is here we find our burger shop 8-Bit Burger, located at 8 droop street. For those of you who haven’t been to Footscray’s main shopping area, you are greeted with Multi...

With exams just around the corner, the stress of study and the impending doom of exams has the capacity to consume some students. Additionally, some are, or they will be, hounded with the inevitable questioning of what to do with all the time that they suddenly have on their hands over summer. Australians are very familiar with New Zealand, Bali, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Perhaps it’s time consider one of Australia’s often-forgotten neighbours as a source of distraction and adventure. The Kokoda Track between Kokoda and Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea has an infamous place in Australia’s collective conscious. It was the closest Australia came to fighting on our own soil during World War II when the Japanese landed on the northern Papua New Guinean coast and began to make thei...

Every piece is handcrafted with the signature nylon mesh and Swarovski crystal combination set in sterling silver or gold. Bianca Censori established Nylons in 2013 out of the need for unique yet timeless jewellery. She’s currently studying Urban Design at the University of Melbourne. We talk to Bianca about Nylons and get an insight to what it’s like managing a business while at university. www.shopnylons.com

Melbourne University Students produce Tinder research paper… We’ve got the results! If you’re single and own a smartphone, chances are you’ve given Tinder a crack. And if you were one of the many trying to get laid as a result, read on… We’ve got SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH on the factors that influence your chances of getting lucky on Tinder. A gun group of Melbourne University commerce students have published a 15-page research paper on Tinder usage and the results may surprise you. Thanks to these jets we are able to present months of complicated econometrics models, research and testing in one short article. God bless their brains. MORE LIKELY TO GET LAID ON TINDER Do the following! 1. Travelling Going travelling soon? Re download Tinder! The study shows that u...

From the first time I saw Kim Jong Il’s circular face splashed across the media I was intrigued by the socialist, dystopian society he was in command. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea as it is commonly known to the outside world; was established after the Japanese Colonial Empire annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910; and the Soviet Union occupied the area above the 38th parallel. North Korea remained a distant mystery to me until I watched Vice’s three part documentary series on the autocratic state which opened my mind to the potential of visiting the last remaining truly socialist regime; I was hooked. Travelling to North Korea was hot on my agenda and became a matter of when instead of if; with the sole entry point of Beijing an expensive 14 hour flight from Mel...